In a major hawala racket has been busted by the Central Board of Direct Taxesin Kolkata. CBDT detained one of the key accused S Nagarjan from city Hazra area.
The CBDT, based on the reports of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), conducted day-long raids at several premises of a Tamil fake-lottery businessman in Kolkata and Siliguri in North Bengal and seized over Rs 80 crore in cash, huge fake lottery tickets and currency-counting machines.
CBDT teams raided one location in Siliguri and over ten locations in Kolkata and unearthed the racket involving laundering of money estimated to be over Rs 1000 crore. A senior IB officer told news persons that after interrogating X Alexander, who was detained earlier on Thursday, one of the main accused S Nagarjan has been detained from a flat at Hazra area on Kolkata.
Sources revealed that Nagrajan is a resident of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and lives in Kolkata with his family for years. Nagarjan is being interrogated and the search operation, to find other key accused including Santiago Martin who are absconding, is still underway.
Nagarjan, Santiago Martin and another person allegedly ran a fake lottery business in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and North-Eastern states under the companys name of General System and Future Plan Enterprise. The IB officers are suspecting that a huge amount of cash has been transferred to Dubai through the international hawala channel.
However, taking assistance from the Income Tax (IT) Department, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is likely to begin investigation into this case to know if there is any connection of Dawood Ibrahim and his D-Company in this hawala racket.